How to return a static HTML file as a response in Django?

Question

I have not figured out how I can present a website with pure HTML code and/or HTML + JavaScript + CSS.

I tried to load an HTML file that just says: Hello World.

I know I can do that with Django too, but later on, I want to display my website with CSS+JavaScript+HTML.

In the views file I run this code:

# Create your views here.
from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template import Context, loader

def index(request):
    template = loader.get_template("app/index.html")
    return HttpResponse(template.render)

But the only thing the website displays is:

Answer 1

If your file isn't a django template but a plain html file, this is the easiest way:

from django.shortcuts import render_to_response

def index (request):
    return render_to_response('app/index.html')

UPDATE 10/13/2020:

render_to_response was deprecated in Django 2.0 and removed in 3.0, so the current way of doing this is:

from django.shortcuts import render

def index (request):
    return render(request, 'app/index.html')